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tv   [untitled]    March 23, 2013 3:30am-4:00am PDT

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worked, those things that don't work. it's interesting because one of the things that we work very hard on was one of the things that the first panel this morning talked about, and that was communication. and language, a common lexicon. so, it was not only a common lexicon, but then a common language that everybody understood when you bring international partners together. we hope we don't have the language barrier for a domestic natural disaster, but nonetheless, there is a language each one of us carries on. we talked about the acronyms each one of us uses. so, we had a real-world -- a real-live exercise that validated some of the things we talk about this morning. but it was extremely beneficial to not only the u.s. navy and marine corps, but to the international community. >> thank you. another hand?
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>> [inaudible] my experience with the haiti response. in this casey i was working at the deputy principal committee level and working at the white house. but it was really the first opportunity for this administration to work with a very complex response, and then recognizing for us the supported commander was usaid that normally isn't in the emergency response business. so, it was an educational process of how to move forces and yet support usaid and the role of the country team and port au prince. so, it was very informative there. and to back up when we had the first no fooling hurricane that worked its way up the entire gulf coast, the principal committee calls that were generated during the haiti response were then turned around and then bringing all of the governors into a conference call with the president to make sure that all their needs were being met in the advance of a
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hurricane arrival. so, we really had all of government, from local all the way up to the white house, fully included in that response. but the haiti response was certainly informative in bringing all these disparate entities together to provide unity of effort during a response. >> we need general spiese. >> okay, thanks. i would offer a little bit from an institutional perspective at the tactical level in the marine corps. that's an area where we could use some improvement. our forces deployed to the western pacific certainly understand this, and they pass it on among themselves. the forces we deploy from southern california and the east coast that float into theater understand disaster assistance and humantarian response very well. that hasn't quite migrated itself into the institutional arena in terms of forces
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stationed here in the united states as it would relate to defense support to civil authorities. i think that's primarily -- this is not a primary mission for us. it's something that we do pay attention to, of course, as we deploy overseas. not necessarily forces we have here in the states. we do understand immediate response, rolling out the gate to help our neighbors in an immediate nature, but i think not so much in terms of mobilization and deploying inside our country. so, this is an area where opportunities like san francisco fleet week will allow us for, and i believe at some point really incorporate this in some internal doctrine that will benefit us in the event that this is a requirement inside the u.s. >> thank you. this morning secretary schultz asked one of the panels that was involved in communications and command and control about
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in this age of information, real-time information, how you're hit with a sea of information and how do you deal with that. something as senior leaders all of you have dealt with. and i believe admiral zukunft used the term dealing with reality tv. so, until you get that unity of effort and get into an up tempo, how do you as a senior leader deal with that sea of information coming at you that's all over cnn and the cable as you look at deploying your forces? >> i'll take that one again. and i'll go back to my experience during the gulf oil spill. and we lost public trust very early on because we would quote numbers and then the numbers would change and then the more they changed, and if you're the speaking head, you lose public trust. in that event we had a great wealth of scientific support that brought in to give you
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situational awareness. and my requirement as the on scene commander is how do i get this into the social media? and, so, in this case noaa had a product called the emergency management response application which was very nascent. i told dp, i need everything to get this live within 72 hours. they came up with $200 million and it went live. if i had to bid that through, you know, through our channels, i might see it five years from today. but now we've run the slide. and on the first day that irma was in social media, we had 250,000 hits. on the second day it was over 3 million. and people could actually navigate through this tool. and what i was saying, they could validate using gps encrypted photographs where the response was. but it helped close that public trust gap and that's really where being able to move as much information as we can out into the public domain as we talk about cop. and obviously we need to look
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about cyber concerns as well. but certainly there is a responsibility to share, and especially with the general public because those are the ones that are going to say yea or nay in terms of how we're responding to an event. >> in the service of managing information during a disaster response, we've developed a very sophisticated common operating picture that has become to be the national standard by using both the doctrine that we have in the military and in the army for the way the commander wants to see the battle field or in this case see the disaster by defining information requirements and then putting out requests for information down to our subordinate units and to our adjacent units or inter agency partners whether in law enforcement or fire or emergency management to bring in and collect all that information to a central node and our emergency center that filters the information i need to make decisions. now, our common operating picture, we developed initially based on military platforms.
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but we've migrate it had to a web-based solution that is open to all of our inter agency partners. it's on the dot-gov domain, it's password protected but it's not on our military proprietary systems. so, we can share the common operating picture that we have with cal ema and we've developed the ability to import data from every allied organization whether it's usgs, the law enforcement agencies, fire, weather, what have you, to be able to put it out in layers so we literally can know everything going on. we can see lightning strikes that cause fires, down to the size of a car fire. we're often able to do predictive analysis that exceeds the ability of fire and other agencies and able to call them up because we can see this and we've trained our battle captains that work in our operations center to think ahead and think three moves ahead whether or not an event they see developing is going to cause a trigger that is going to require national guard or other military forces to deploy.
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>> if i may, i think it's for us, myself as the senior leader in third fleet, it's about information sharing and intelligence fusion and turning that into actionable knowledge. we have a 24/7 maritime operation center as well that we attempt to do that. we do have cnn up, usually turn the volume down and just look at the pictures and read the bumper sticker underneath to get intel so we're not biased by what an individual reporter might be saying, but surprisingly enough, tongue in cheek, cnn is usually a very good source of information as to what's going on, especially domestically. we've had several incidents in the last couple years of real world experience. most recent was the california, the wildland firefighting that we took part. we actually initiated our first ira, immediate response assistance, for 72 hours where we called up one of our
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helicopter squadron in southern california to fight the fires. so, for us, again, that common operating picture, that's a recurring term that several people on different panels today have used, but that is the king for us. it's our situational awareness. it's what allows us to turn the volumes of information into those nuggets of actionable knowledge that we really need in order to support those that need our assistance. >> okay. over the last eight hours, however long we've been here, we've heard quite a bit about new skill development, and learning about new capabilities, but didn't hear the word sustainment of skills mentioned, which also becomes important. would anyone on the panel care to comment on how you wrap that
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into the system that we are -- we've embarked on here in the exercise arena with fleet week? >> whenever you show up for a response, we have to speak a common language. and the common language is instant command system. that's a skill set that we've sustained among our entire work force because if you can't speak in a common lexicon, then you're probably doomed to fail when you're in that planning sea -- developing your plans and executing your incident action plan. so, that's become a critical skill set. for every active duty, every reservist and even our coast guard auxiliaryist, 35,000 volunteers, some you may see outside the gate and say, wow, the coast guard hangs onto its people a long time. they're median age, older than me, but they volunteer their services, including during an emergency response. and they, too, are ics trained to support in a time of emergency.
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>> sustaining these skills is something that, as you say, jody, is a deliberate action. we're in the process of doing that right now. we have built san francisco fleet week and its associated exercises into our training continuum, and we'll continue to do so into the future. this will give us several milestones on our calendar that will get our heads back into this very complex arena. so, we certainly understand that. i think we're going to be seeing guidance coming from the secretary of the defense in the next couple of years that will elevate this in terms of our responsibilities and mission sets. so, we're in the process of laying the groundwork for that right now at camp pendleton. >> ann? >> just to build on what general spiese said, fleet week, this used to be or started as a one-week event, is now really -- goes year round. and, so, the relationships
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we're building, it's not just for this week. you know, we're building trust. we're building -- we're building that kind of knowledge of each other's capabilities, of our competencies that we will continue to exercise throughout the yearses. so, i think that's a very important point to make, that fleet week is not just one week, but these relationships are ongoing. >> and tomorrow we'll have some specific training of the military training civil authorities and civil authorities training military with specific skills that they'll be able to bring to bear in their specific area of responsibility. i'd like to open it up to the audience now to see if there might be some questions for these leaders. and then also one last question.
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do we have -- okay, they're getting a microphone now, jeff. thank you, admiral. the last issue that you all just talked about, the sustainability issue, this is the one that concerns me because a lot of people in local government, i'm sure, have had the same experience we have in oakland. many great programs start off very well, then people leave. budgets get cut. there's no sustainability. and they go off into the horizon. so, you four enlightened commanders, you understand this. but the challenges ahead, sequestration, perhaps, your budgets, change of command, retirement -- how do you four feel about being able to sustain this program and the concept that has been started here in the last three years at
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san francisco fleet week? >> i'll take that, jeff. one of the things that we have done is made sure that we derive value and benefit from the programs that we participate in. if we were showing up to be a training aid for somebody else, that would certainly die out. but we have mapped out objectives for ourselves which really benefit us across the spectrum of our operations. so, if you understand that going into this business and you know that you can get something out of it, there is a greater willingness, i think, to participate. so, we're in the process of building that and trying to codify that into our long-term training plan. >> if you talk to my marine brethren, they may kit indicate that the navy would leave you. [laughter] >> some of you got that.
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it has to do with a little i sland that -- * [laughter] >> anyway, i can assure you that the u.s. navy is not going to leave. and some of the things that i used to back that up, general ka joe bastardi i, commander in the northern command, who really has overall responsibility for a military effort with regards to domestic support to civil authorities will be here tomorrow. i think it's the first time that we've had the commander in the northern command and the three such sos that we've had, he is going to adopt a model that we employed with the immediate response assistance that i indicated to you earlier that we used earlier this year. he's going to adopt that as the model for northern command with the army and the air force to use. i think the momentum that we have gained here over the last three years, we leveraged off of that. we started a similar senior
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leadership seminar up in seattle, that we had the first one this year. they have some people down here from the seattle sea fair, which is the equivalent of san francisco fleet week association. they have people from the sea fair committee, board, if you l that is here observing what we do here in san francisco. and, so, those are great indicators to me that this program, this collaboration and partnership building is here to stay way beyond after i'm gone. >> and i'll just say 10% of the active duty coast guard makes its home here in the bay area. if we're a smaller coast guard tomorrow, we'll still have 10% of the coast guard here in the bay area. this is a critical hub for the coast guard. and when you look at the pacific, i expect to see our numbers to go up over time. so, i am not concerned in the
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least. my house and the 20 pacific area commanders before me, if you look out the door, that's my house right up from the light house. and, so, we are strategically located here in the bay. so, we will be here for the long term as well. >> any other questions from the audience? okay. if i could ask you one last one, that is, as you -- a number of you at the table have participated since 2010. so, have you looked at your broadened responsibilities and engaged in the world or engaged regionally and gaps have been identified, could you offer an aha moment for yourself personally in the process, or the gaps that still remains that is still troublesome to
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you that needs to be addressed? >> to me, my aha moment was last year. it was my first experience with the sls. it was the second one that we had conducted. so, there was some skill -- you know, the honeymoon, so to speak, wasn't quite over yet. and, so, we were still getting to know each other. and the biggest lesson learned for myself in talking with my civilian counterparts from both federal, state, and local agencies was the understanding and appreciation on their part that those of us in the military uniform were not showing up to be large and in charge, but that we were showing up to be supporting of their supported mission. so, that was kind of an eye
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opener to me, that that understanding wasn't there, you know, readily apparent. and, so, i think it served each and every one of us well and will continue to do that, to understand that that is exactly what the u.s. military is doing when we respond to a disaster. we are there to support. we are supporting and not the supported commander. >> i think one of the things that was a revelation this year, as we've had a chance to do more, i think there is a discovery of how much more really needs to be done. i'm not sure if we quite know yet collectively what we do not yet know in terms of what will be necessary to have an effective response. the comments that we have and the work that we've done over
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the last couple of months of putting the pieces together just get the lcac ashore, the helicopterses in to conduct an exercise up here last summer reveals that there's a lot more work that needs to be done if this is to be smooth. it's complex. it's hard. frankly, the military piece is going to be relatively easy. we'll be able to sort for ourselves relatively fast because we've got a pretty good sight picture on who we are and what we are w dough and how we fit together. i think one of the real challenges, my observation, is civil authorities getting a full grip on everything that's going to be necessary to put together a sound response at the local level, and then herding all the cats that are in this pretty complex environment and trying to get them moving in a common direction. >> general baldwin? >> first, i'm very, very encouraged at the direction the
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department of defense has taken in changing the way that we do support the civil authorities. and the evolution, the problem that came out of the l.a. riots that were highlighted during hurricane katrina, we had two milltrix out there, the active force and responding. with changes in the law and changes in focus and direction we're starting to fix a lot of that and come together as one joint team to be able to better serve the people here in the state of california and the rest the nation in times of disaster. but there is work that needs to be done. first, we need to find a way that we can share capabilities that are resident within each of our organizations. as the commander of the army national guard you would think i know what forces are available in the army reserve in california. but i don't. i don't even know who their general officers are. i have no visibility on what forces are available at camp pendleton depending on your deployment cycle what fleet week can bring to bear. and we need to find a way,
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perhaps dcl, north palm being the broker of that, to maintain a better capabilities database so we know what is immediately available because under our old constructs, if we needed additional help in the national guard in california, we would go to the national guard from other states and that may be 1500 miles away. and that capability could be right down the road or down in san diego in one of the reserve components or in the active components of the marines or the navy and we need to sort through that so we can better respond. with that also will come changes that may need to be statutory changes so we can better accept the title 10 forces in particular the reserve forces. it is very frustrating during fire season when our black hawk helicopter company flying its rotors off down in los alamedos is sitting on the same ramp as army reserve helicopters we can't access because of staff problems and other issues we're going to have to work through to fight those same fires, those are the kind of things we'll probably have to take back to our elected leadership
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and change -- make some changes to be able to better serve the people. >> i was at chief sur, and i was glad to hear him say that we really rely on the communities to be their responder for the first 72 hours. this topic of community resiliency is played out in the highest level of government. certainly when i traveled with craig fugate doing national services, the earthquake last year, they get it during an exercise environment, but how is that going to differ from reality? but it's permeating down to the local level now. and the next challenge is how do we cross that bridge to truly having community resiliency? how do we leverage faith-based and nongovernmental organizations to carry that message for local, state, and federal leaders? so, i think that's the next challenge going forward. but the messages being delivered from the top down, i think the next piece is how do
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you now move it horizontally across the community level. >> and in closing, i'm going to go down the panel and ask if there's any closing comments or points that you haven't had the opportunity to make. i think, you know, people are anxious to hear your thoughts on this particular program and on this mission because it is going to take all of us if the big one happens. so, if i can start with you, vice admiral beaman, if there is anything you'd like to impart, sir. >> actually, i have 37 things i'd like to talk about, but knowing we are the last thing between you and the refreshments in the back, i'll limit it to one. and michelle gedess brought it up earlier today. it's been characterized a couple different ways. vice admiral breckenridge asked if there are any gaps that we've discovered. i would say in a denied environment, it's something we in the military are looking and training to on a daily basis.
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but in terms of communications, in a denied environment -- and it's not through any particular act that's denying us other than whatever destruction is a resultant of the disaster that hit. and i think that's where we really have work to do. i think next year's table top exercise, if it addressed that or the drill itself went after that, i think we would stand to learn a lot. some of it wouldn't be pleasant, but better to learn it now than in the event something has happened. and thank you very much. >> thank you, sir. >> this is my third fleet week. the trajectory is right, and we really need to keep it going. and look forward to putting the pieces together for next year. >> i'll just echo those
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sentiments and let's hope that history is not a teacher because on october 17th, 1989 at 5:04 p.m., during the world series between the oakland athletics and the san francisco giants, that's when that one hit at 7.1 and then oakland went on to sweep 4 games to none. >> we are very pleased to be invited to participate this year. this is the first year the california national guard has participated in any substantial way in fleet week. i know we have only a very, very tiny fleet between our army forces and our air forces. we do have a couple of vessels. we are looking forward to continuing to participate and doing yet more to support this and the work with our inter agency partners. >> we in the san francisco bay area region will continue to work with our local partners, with our state partners, cal
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ema, the national guard, with our federal partners fema, the national park service, and with all of our military partners to, you know, really work on being prepared and ready for anything in the bay area region. and i'm confident that with the relationships we're building, that we will be prepared when the time comes. thank you. >> thank you to the panel for all of their insights. (applause) >> big hand for the panel, that was great. and if i could ask the panel to stay where you are, jody, if you would sit down. i want to bring the closing remarks, i want to bring up former secretary of state george schultz. >> for closing remarks, want to
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bring up secretary of state george schultz. if you could help on this end. >> that was a great panel. thank you all. >> well, we've had quite a display. we've had a lot of area planning, filled with op exercises. we had the ocean beach yesterday. the military made something difficult look easy. it was a display of competence. and it gives us confidence that not only is the military going to help us if we have a problem here, but the military is able to do its job of protecting our national security with confidence. it's wonderful to see confidence on display. i was asking myself as i
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listened to the panel today and i'm working with mike and leslie on the program, what kind of words would describe what we're doing? well, certainly impressive is one. reassuring is one, that we see what's going on, the planning, the capabilities. i think another is to underline the importance and then this panel in particular they underline t the importance of looking on this as a building operation. each year has been a little better than the year before or different. if that's been iterative or a plus [speaker not understood]. somebody asked if we could keep this going. may i remind you it's been going for 31 years. we've had this last two years that have been